How to match anything EXCEPT this string? - ruby

How can I match a string that is NOT partners?
Here is what I have that matches partners:
/^partners$/i
I've tried the following to NOT match partners but doesn't seem to work:
/^(?!partners)$/i

Your regex
/^(?!partners)$/i
only matches empty lines because you didn't include the end-of-line anchor in your lookahead assertion. Lookaheads do just that - they "look ahead" without actually matching any characters, so only lines that match the regex ^$ will succeed.
This would work:
/^(?!partners$)/i
This reports a match with any string (or, since we're in Ruby here, any line in a multi-line string) that's different from partners. Note that it only matches the empty string at the start of the line. Which is enough for validation purposes, but the match result will be "" (instead of nil which you'd get if the match failed entirely).

not easily but with the look ahead operator it can.
Here the ruby regex
^((?!partners).)*$
Cheers

If you only want to get a true value when string is not partners then there is no need to use regex and you can just use a string comparison (which ignores case).
If you for some reason need a positive regex match for any string which does not contain partners (if it's a part of a larger regex for example) you could use several different constructs, like:
`^(?:(?!partners).)*$`
or
^(?:[^p]+|p(?!artners))*$

For example, in Java:
!"partners".equalsIgnoreCase(aString)

Related

How can I check for repeated strings with check-tail plugin in Sensu?

I am using sensu and the check-tail.rb plugin to alert if any errors appear in my app logs. The problem is that I want the check to be successful if it finds 3 or more error messages.
The solution that I came up with is using a regex like:
\^.*"status":503,.*$.*^.*"status":503,.*$.*^.*"status":503,.*$\im
But it seems to not work because of the match function: instead of passing the variable as a ruby regex it passes it as a string (this can be seen here).
You need to pass the pattern as a string literal, not as a Regexp object.
Thus, you need to remove the regex delimiters and change the modifiers to their inline option variants, that is, prepend the pattern with (?im).
(?im)\A.*"status":503,.*$.*^.*"status":503,.*$.*^.*"status":5‌​03,.*\z
Note that to match the start of string in Ruby, you need to use \A and to match the end of string, you need to use \z anchors.

What is the difference between these three alternative ways to write Ruby regular expressions?

I want to match the path "/". I've tried the following alternatives, and the first two do match, but I don't know why the third doesn't:
/\A\/\z/.match("/") # <MatchData "/">
"/\A\/\z/".match("/") # <MatchData "/">
Regexp.new("/\A\/\z/").match("/") # nil
What's going on here? Why are they different?
The first snippet is the only correct one.
The second example is... misleading. That string literal "/\A\/\z/" is, obviously, not a regex. It's a string. Strings have #match method which converts its argument to a regexp (if not already one) and match against it. So, in this example, it's '/' that is the regular expression, and it matches a forward slash found in the other string.
The third line is completely broken: don't need the surrounding slashes there, they are part of regex literal, which you didn't use. Also use single quoted strings, not double quoted (which try to interpret escape sequences like \A)
Regexp.new('\A/\z').match("/") # => #<MatchData "/">
And, of course, none of the above is needed if you just want to check if a string consists of only one forward slash. Just use the equality check in this case.
s == '/'

Matching multiple parts of a string as first match

Given the following string:
details.html?id=8220&inr=4241&marke=Ford&modell=Focus&art=Gebrauchtwagen&standort=
I need to match 82204241 in a single expression. I need to extract all numbers from it as a single match. Any idea how this can be solved?
(\d+) will create two matches. I also tried with something like this without any luck: details\.html\?[id=|.*inr=]+(\d+)
Regex only matches a substring of the original string. Since 82204241 does not appear as a substring in the original string, it is impossible to match that as a single match with a regex.
How about joining regex scan? Here:
a = "details.html?id=8220&inr=4241&marke=Ford&modell=Focus&art=Gebrauchtwagen&standort="
a.scan(/\d+/).join
# => "82204241"

Precedence of Ruby regular expressions?

I am reviewing regular expressions and cannot understand why a regular expression won't match a given string, specifically:
regex = /(ab*)+(bc)?/
mystring = "abbc"
The match matches "abb" but leaves the c off. I tested this using Rubular and in IRB and don't understand why the regex doesn't match the entire string. I thought that (ab*)+ would match "ab" and then (bc)? would match "bc".
Am I missing something in terms of precedence for regular expression operations?
Regular expressions try to match the first part of the regular expression as much as possible by default, and they do not backtrack to try to make larger sections match if they don't have to. Since you make (bc) optional, the (ab*) can match as much as it wants (the non-zero repetition after it doesn't have much to do) and doesn't try backtracking to try other matching alternatives.
If you want the whole string to be matched (which will force some backtracking in this case) make sure you anchor both ends of the string:
regex = /^(ab*)+(bc)?$/
The regex with parenthesis assumes you have two matches in your string.
The first one is abb because (ab*) means a and zero or more b. You have two b, so the match is abb. Then you have only c in your string, so it doesn't match the second condition which is bc.

Replacing partial regex matches in place with Ruby

I want to transform the following text
This is a ![foto](foto.jpeg), here is another ![foto](foto.png)
into
This is a ![foto](/folder1/foto.jpeg), here is another ![foto](/folder2/foto.png)
In other words I want to find all the image paths that are enclosed between brackets (the text is in Markdown syntax) and replace them with other paths. The string containing the new path is returned by a separate real_path function.
I would like to do this using String#gsub in its block version. Currently my code looks like this:
re = /!\[.*?\]\((.*?)\)/
rel_content = content.gsub(re) do |path|
real_path(path)
end
The problem with this regex is that it will match ![foto](foto.jpeg) instead of just foto.jpeg. I also tried other regexen like (?>\!\[.*?\]\()(.*?)(?>\)) but to no avail.
My current workaround is to split the path and reassemble it later.
Is there a Ruby regex that matches only the path inside the brackets and not all the contextual required characters?
Post-answers update: The main problem here is that Ruby's regexen have no way to specify zero-width lookbehinds. The most generic solution is to group what the part of regexp before and the one after the real matching part, i.e. /(pre)(matching-part)(post)/, and reconstruct the full string afterwards.
In this case the solution would be
re = /(!\[.*?\]\()(.*?)(\))/
rel_content = content.gsub(re) do
$1 + real_path($2) + $3
end
A quick solution (adjust as necessary):
s = 'This is a ![foto](foto.jpeg)'
s.sub!(/!(\[.*?\])\((.*?)\)/, '\1(/folder1/\2)' )
p s # This is a [foto](/folder1/foto.jpeg)
You can always do it in two steps - first extract the whole image expression out and then second replace the link:
str = "This is a ![foto](foto.jpeg), here is another ![foto](foto.png)"
str.gsub(/\!\[[^\]]*\]\(([^)]*)\)/) do |image|
image.gsub(/(?<=\()(.*)(?=\))/) do |link|
"/a/new/path/" + link
end
end
#=> "This is a ![foto](/a/new/path/foto.jpeg), here is another ![foto](/a/new/path/foto.png)"
I changed the first regex a bit, but you can use the same one you had before in its place. image is the image expression like ![foto](foto.jpeg), and link is just the path like foto.jpeg.
[EDIT] Clarification: Ruby does have lookbehinds (and they are used in my answer):
You can create lookbehinds with (?<=regex) for positive and (?<!regex) for negative, where regex is an arbitrary regex expression subject to the following condition. Regexp expressions in lookbehinds they have to be fixed width due to limitations on the regex implementation, which means that they can't include expressions with an unknown number of repetitions or alternations with different-width choices. If you try to do that, you'll get an error. (The restriction doesn't apply to lookaheads though).
In your case, the [foto] part has a variable width (foto can be any string) so it can't go into a lookbehind due to the above. However, lookbehind is exactly what we need since it's a zero-width match, and we take advantage of that in the second regex which only needs to worry about (fixed-length) compulsory open parentheses.
Obviously you can put real_path in from here, but I just wanted a test-able example.
I think that this approach is more flexible and more readable than reconstructing the string through the match group variables
In your block, use $1 to access the first capture group ($2 for the second and so on).
From the documentation:
In the block form, the current match string is passed in as a parameter, and variables such as $1, $2, $`, $&, and $' will be set appropriately. The value returned by the block will be substituted for the match on each call.
As a side note, some people think '\1' inappropriate for situations where an unconfirmed number of characters are matched. For example, if you want to match and modify the middle content, how can you protect the characters on both sides?
It's easy. Put a bracket around something else.
For example, I hope replace a-ruby-porgramming-book-531070.png to a-ruby-porgramming-book.png. Remove context between last "-" and last ".".
I can use /.*(-.*?)\./ match -531070. Now how should I replace it? Notice
everything else does not have a definite format.
The answer is to put brackets around something else, then protect them:
"a-ruby-porgramming-book-531070.png".sub(/(.*)(-.*?)\./, '\1.')
# => "a-ruby-porgramming-book.png"
If you want add something before matched content, you can use:
"a-ruby-porgramming-book-531070.png".sub(/(.*)(-.*?)\./, '\1-2019\2.')
# => "a-ruby-porgramming-book-2019-531070.png"

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